Sunday, April 20, 2014

Soviet pre-arranged form reports

The war
between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was the largest land campaign of
WWII, with millions of troops fighting in the vast areas of Eastern Europe. In
this conflict both sides used every weapon available to them, from various
models of tanks and self propelled guns to fighter and bomber aircraft. However
an aspect of the war that has not received a lot of attention from historians
is the use of signals intelligence and codebreaking by the Germans and the Soviets.

Codebreaking
and signals intelligence played a major role in the German war effort. The
German Army had 3 signal intelligence regiments (KONA
units) assigned to the three Army groups in the East (Army Group North,
South and Centre). In addition from 1942 another one was added to monitor
Partisan traffic. The Luftwaffe had similar units assigned to the 3 Air Fleets
(Luftflotten) providing aerial support to the Army Groups. Both the Army and
the Luftwaffe also established central cryptanalytic departments
(Horchleitstelle Ost and LN Regt 353) for the Eastern front in East
Prussia. During the war this effort paid off as the German codebreakers could
solve Soviet
low, mid and high level cryptosystems. They also intercepted the internal
radio teletype network carrying economic and military traffic and used
traffic analysis and direction finding in order to identify the Soviet order of
battle.

An important
source of information on the Soviet military was their pre-arranged form
reports sent at regular intervals by all units to their higher headquarters.
These messages used a pre-arranged format to communicate strength,
serviceability and loss statistics. By reading these messages the Germans were
able to monitor the strength, losses and reinforcements of Soviet formations.

Luftwaffe
Chi Stelle effort

Several TICOM
sources give information on the exploitation of these pre-arranged reports by
the codebreakers of the Luftwaffe. According to IF-187 Seabourne Report,
Vol. XII. ‘Technical Operations in the East, Luftwaffe SIS’ (available from
site Ticom
Archive) pages 5-8 the reports had information on the condition of Soviet
airfields, stocks of planes, ammunition, rations and fuel.

According to
FMS P-038 'German Radio intelligence', p115-7 pre-arranged reports sent by
Soviet Army units contained information on personnel strength, losses, number
of vehicles, guns, ammunition gasoline supplies and similar statistical data.

By analyzing
this information the Germans were not only able to monitor the strength and
equipment situation of enemy units but also make deductions about overall
Soviet strategy.